Watched August 11, 2013
1979
Starring: Joanne Nail, John Huston, Lance Hendrikson, Paige Conner
A man is walking in a strange, other worldly place, it appears to be a barren desert but the sky is a psychedelic mix of colors like a lava lamp. He sees a figure in the distance, as he gets closer the figure reveals the face of a young girl.
Next we see a strange yellow haired man talking to a group of bald kids. He is telling them a story about an alien battle. Jerzy (John Huston) approaches the group and tells the yellow haired man that there is another special child that had been born. He will do is best to find the child and get her to their side.
At a basketball game we meet Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail) and her boyfriend Raymond (Lance Hendrikson) who happens to own the team. At the last second of the game when a player is about to dunk the ball, the ball explodes. Barbara's daughter Katy (Paige Conner) had been wandering around the stadium and seems to be the cause of the basketball explosion.
Raymond is a successful businessman and he goes to a meeting with a group of powerful men. They want to know how Raymond is doing in securing Barbara. The group wants Katy's powers and since she is a child they first have to gain the trust of the mother.
It is Katy's birthday and a group of parents are there to celebrate. She gets a strange gift that she opens where no one can see. Inside is a gun, Katy throws the box down but the gun is thrown out and it fires, hitting Barbara in the spine. Barbara is now paralyzed from the waist down and needs to use a wheelchair. No one saw what happened with the gun, but it seems that Katy may have made the gun go off so that her mother would have to spend more time at home with her.
Now that Barbara is in a wheelchair she hires Jane (Shelley Winters) to be the housekeeper. Jane also knows about Katy's powers and the fight that is going on over who can control her. Raymond takes Barbara to a fancy dinner and says something inappropriate so that Barbara breaks off their relationship. Jerzy shows up and says that he is coming from the babysitting service, he spends some time with Katy to assess her powers and if she has chosen the side of good or evil.
The group of men who were controlling Raymond wanted him to impregnate Barbara so that they could have another child with powers. But when he blew it they took it under their own hands, one night while driving with Katy, Barbara's car stalled out. Then a strange truck showed up and some men grabbed her and impregnated her. Katy seemed to want a little brother so she didn't do anything about it. Barbara knows she is pregnant so she goes to her ex husband who happens to be a doctor.
Barbara comes back to her house and is attacked by Katy's bird. Katy then shows up and pushes Barbara through a fish tank. Raymond arrives and puts a noose around Barbara's neck and puts her on the staircase elevator and is about to slowly choke her to death. Then a ton of birds arrive and attack Raymond. They kill him and destroy the house. It's not seen who survives.
Back at the yellow haired man's cult we see Jerzy bring a new child in and it's Katy with a shaved head. I think we are meant to assume that she is now on the side of good but it's unknown. It guess Barbara died in the bird attack.
I was definitely confused for a lot of the movie, especially relating to who was on what side and what it had to do with aliens. I'm not sure if Katy was an alien or not. I really like Joanne Nail since she was in Switchblade Sisters so it was great to see her but terrible to see her constantly beat up. Katy was not too annoying even though her allegiance seemed like it could have gone either way. Lance Hendrikson's character Raymond is stabbed by the most fake looking bird I've seen in awhile, which is strange because they used real birds for the rest of the movie. Katy wears some of the strangest hairstyles I've seen on a kids, lots of weird braids and pigtails. Overall I would say it was confusing but enjoyable.
Watched August 4, 2013
1988
Starring: Debrah Mullowney, Brian Robbins, Yvonne De Carlo
In the 1950s, a cartoonist is working in his basement studio on a comic. He is referencing a satanic book, and is drawing the description of the demon from the book. Quickly he realizes that his drawings are coming to life and the demon is real! A woman appears from the pages of his comic and the cartoonist watches the demon destroy the woman, then the demon comes after the cartoonist.
Jump to modern day 1980s, the cartoonist's house has been turned into an artists retreat. Whitney (Debrah Mullowney) is a cartoonist who has been admitted to the retreat, even though the head of the house looks down on cartooning as not a real art. Whitney runs into Amanda (Pamela Bellwood) who is a rival from college. Amanda does conceptual video art and still has a grudge with Whitney. The cellar is off limits, but one night Whitney is compelled to go down there. She intantly loves it and asks Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne de Carlo) is she can move her studio down there. Mrs. Briggs reluctantly agrees and Whitney gets to cleaning up the very dirty cellar. Quickly she moves some dust around, adds some flowers and her new studio is ready to go.
Whitney is inspired to draw a demon that she has never drawn before. Amanda secretly films her and sets up a video that frames Whitney as plagiarizing her artwork. While Amanda is editing the film together she is eaten by a the demon. Lisa (Miranda Wilson) is a performance artist and she shares a piece with dolls and stabbing balloons. Quickly Whitney is taken over with drawing the demon, and her comics keep happening. She quickly realizes that she is drawing murders and she has to stop the demon. All the artist are either killed by the demon or drawn into his dimension. The demon begins to create his own comics, so Whitney doesn't know what to do. She spills some white out and the demon is stopped. Then she grabs all the comics and burns them. This destroys the demons, but she also had drawings of all the other artists at the colony and she kills them too.
Whitney freehand inks her comics, which is pretty impressive. She really grinds that ink on the page. I like movies about cartooning because my husband is a cartoonist as well as many of my friend and they always try to make it seem more glamorous than it really is. I really liked Lisa's terrible dance performance art piece. Phillip also does terrible minimalist art. I like it as a simple and fun horror concept with my favorite type of people, weirdo artists.
Watched July 28, 2014
1987
Starring: Scott Valentine, Michelle Little, Gina Gallego, Robert Trebor
We were all a little wary when this made its way to the front of the queue, as the demon based romantic comedy is hard to pull off. But I figured that a guy that turns into a demon whenever he is turned on has got to be at least a little fun.
We first meet Kaz (Scott Valentine) as he is busking in a New York subway car playing his saxophone terribly. He looks as sounds crazy so everyone is trying to get away from him. He gets near a busty lady and transforms into his demon version.
Denny (Michelle Little) is walking home from grocery shopping when she sees a bunch of guys putting her TV and blender into their van. It turns out that her boyfriend is stealing all her stuff, he tells her off and steps on her pie before driving away. Denny's friend Sonia (Gina Gallego) comes over to comfort her and it is established that Denny has a history of dating deadbeat guys. Denny wants to change this pattern. While eating at a local health food cafe, Kaz jumps out of a pile of trash bags and tries to eat Denny's burger. She takes pity on him and lets him take a bite of her burger, but he spits it out onto her skirt, because it's not meat it's a veggie and fruit burger. Denny takes of for her apartment, but Kaz follows her. She is really trying to stick to her plan of not dating any more losers, but something about Kaz just gets to her. Maybe it's how dirty and crazy he is. He tells her he doesn't have a place to stay so she allows him to sleep on her couch.
The next day they make a pact to be friends and there is a montage of them doing all sorts of friend activities around New York. It doesn't take Denny that long to want to go further with their friendship, but while making out Kaz reveals his demon self. He tells her the story of when he was a teenager he was making out with a Gypsy's daughter, when the gypsy walked in and cursed him. She cursed him with a petrotsky demon. That means whenever he is aroused it opens the gate for a demon to take him over, so he can't really enjoy sex.
Meanwhile there is a maniac that keeps attacking women in the street. It seems like it might be Kaz when he takes his demon form, since he doesn't always remember what he did as a demon. Sonia runs an occult store and is a little psychic and she gets a vision that Kaz is the killer so she tries to take him out. Sonia happened to be coming from a singles bar where so often goes, while running out she grabs Phil, the local loser who can't seem to get a date. It is quickly revealed that Phil is the killer that has been attacking ladies, he grabs Denny and takes her to Belvedere Castle in Central Park. He needs to kill her to reveal his demon, or something like that. Kaz is fast on the trail, but the castle is barricaded. Sonia makes out with Kaz to reveal a demon that has tiny wings so he can save Denny. Kaz and Phil have a big fight over the castle, ultimately Phil is destroyed and Kaz takes a hit that rids him of his demons. Denny and Kaz head back to her apartment to have some demon free sex.
"Let's go take a shower, Fruit Burger" is what Kaz says to Denny once he is rid of his demons.
Denny wears some great late '80s outfits but my favorite by far was pink tights, yellow socks, sneakers, mini skirt black with bright fish, bone earrings, shirt/jacket with Scottie dogs and a fire hydrant. When Kaz turns into a demon in front of Denny and changes, she fights those demons. One of them is a old lady, when Denny punches her in the face the old demons head explodes with mustard goo. I really liked that when Kaz's condition was explained to a new person, they instantly said "oh a petrotsky demon," like it was a totally common thing. Horror comedy rarely works for me, but this was pretty goofy and fun.
Watched July 21, 2014
1993
Starring: Maxwell Caulfield, Billy Dee Williams, Tracy Scoggins.
The action kicks off right away with a laser gun fight on a space ship. Every man is for himself as there doesn't seem to be a right or wrong side. The main guy destroys the controls of the ship, then a mysterious raven haired woman appears which prompts the guy to commit suicide.
Jump to a maximum security prison, where Nick (Maxwell Caulfield) is incarcerated. Commander Skyler (Billy Dee Williams) is assembling a crew of promising inmates to be the crew on a mission to recover the ship from the first scene. He doesn't tell them this, instead he just tells them if the mission goes well they'll be rewarded with their freedom. Before they head out they all choose a virtual reality story to experience during their off time, by story I mean sexy lady.
They are headed for the mysterious sector G, Commander Skyler doesn't give them much information, he just wants them to keep the ship headed there. It doesn't matter much because they spent most of their time in their virtual reality scenarios. Nick's fantasy involves him working out on an empty beach, once he goes to the beach house a naked lady waits for him, but he is distracted from that naked lady by a raven haired dream intruder, but she's super hot. Another member of the crew in in a Casablanca type black and white fantasy, where he is running a club, the singer of his club is the same raven haired lady, except she is in a terrible blond wig. The third crew member's VR fantasy is that he is a 1950s biker and he runs into the same lady at a gas station. The last fantasy is in the 1880s wild west, his woman is shot by the raven haired lady, she must be some sort of Alien intruder. Commander Skyler sees the woman, who he calls Ariel in his computer screen, and she is the force that is guiding him to sector G.
Pieces of their fantasies begin to appear during their waking lives. The Casablanca fantasy guy hears the song that the woman was singing as his dream club in the ship and freaks out. They make into sector G and find the ship that the first action scene took place on. I'm not sure if they're there to recover anything as they discover that everyone is dead. Ariel appears and pits all the men against each other, recreating the same scene from the beginning. But Nick is stronger than that, he doesn't want to bend to her will. After escaping in a little ship, he thinks he safe, but Ariel is there with him as the Alien Intruder.
This movie barely makes sense but it was still a lot of fun. It kicks of with a laser gun fight right away which is great. All the VR fantasy scenes are pretty silly but enjoyable. It's amazing how entertained I was without much information about why they were heading to sector G or why sector G was dangerous in the first place. I also don't know what the alien Ariel wants, is it just to kill everybody through seduction? There is plenty of T&A in this movie and it easily could have drifted into erotica territory but they keep it movie with the real laser action.
